Nitish Kumar’s support for demonetisation has fuelled speculation about a possible truce with friend-turned-foe BJP, but the latter perceives it as a smart ploy by the Bihar Chief Minister to tame his troublesome ally Lalu Prasad. In last year’s elections to the 243-member Bihar Assembly, Prasad’s RJD had won 80 seats — nine more than Kumar’s JD(U). And yet, the RJD chief had taken a back seat and allowed Kumar to become Chief Minister.
“Nitish is only trying to browbeat Lalu. Don’t take his positioning on demonetisation as an indication of support for us,” a senior BJP leader told BusinessLine . However, over the last one year of the grand alliance, or Mahagatbandhan, Kumar’s most popular poll plank – law and order – has come under strain with the RJD’s volatile cadre challenging State authority.
The release of Mohammad Shahabuddin, a former RJD MP jailed on murder charges, led to an ugly fight between the allies. Shahabuddin challenged the Bihar CM, and another RJD stalwart, Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, asserted that it was Lalu, and not Nitish, who is the alliance leader.
Nitish’s positioning on the note ban issue, therefore, is being perceived in the BJP as having two objectives – to appear on the side of an anti-corruption move, as also to send a message to Prasad. Highly-placed sources in the BJP told
The BJP has thus been reticent over the past two weeks. This despite Kumar’s support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s initiative when his own party leader Sharad Yadav had joined the Opposition protest against the move. When asked about his response for Kumar’s gesture, BJP President Amit Shah only said, “We are only commenting on those who are opposing us.”
But at a time when Kumar’s friends — West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, and her Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal — were at the forefront of the protests, and his allies in the Mahagatbandhan — the Congress and the RJD — join the chorus, the Bihar CM’s support came as a shot in the arm for the BJP.
Back and forthKumar reacted by declaring that “canards are being spread to ensure my political assassination”, an assertion that led veteran Bihar BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi to say that such an eventuality is entirely possible if the JD(U) National President continues to align with the Congress and Prasad. Modi said Kumar should return to the BJP fold if he wanted to survive in politics.
Modi’s comments drew a characteristic response from former Bihar CM and Prasad’s wife Rabri Devi, who said that “Modi should carry Nitish back and get his sister married off to him”.
But things seem to have been straightened out between the two Mahagatbandhan leaders ever since.
Kumar had a long meeting with Lalu this Tuesday, after which the latter piped down from his earlier strong opposition of demonetisation to say that the anti-corruption measure was fine in principle, but he was against its poor implementation that had been causing hardship to common people.